Lee plucked an e from the typecase and slipped it into the text in his composing stick: The principle of government in capitalist socie …
“Did you know Flowers was a spy?” Friday asked.
She was sitting halfway down the stairs to the basement, watching her father set type. The shop smelled of sawdust and the benzene used to clean the type, which tickled Friday’s nose and made her eyeballs itch.
“Everyone knew that,” Lee said, finding a t, y …
“Some cover,” Friday said.
“Eventually knew it,” Lee said, opening his composing stick and moving the text into a galley. “The way he hopscotched around the world, it became pretty obvious.”
“Make any difference you were a Trotskyite?”
Lee shot her a glance.
“Sorry,” she said. “Trotskyist.”
Lee adjusted the composing stick, put in a lead, and started setting type.
“He had Q clearance,” Lee said. “On loan to some department, DOE, maybe, something to do with nuclear something or other.”
“No one talked about it?” Friday asked. “His being a spy?”
Lee glanced over the top of his glasses at his handwritten copy, clipped above the type case, and found letters without glancing down.
“As much as people talk about Harry,” Lee said.
“People do talk about Harry,” Friday said.
“Not as much as you think,” Lee said.
He finished the sentence:… political machinery in the hands of the ruling class.
“They always talk to me,” Friday said.
“People talk to fill empty lives,” Lee said. “Anything unusual—”
“Unusual?” Friday repeated.
“—is enough,” Lee said. “Eighteen-eighties New York society was buzzing about hashish hors d’oeuvres. Nineteen ninety-seven, everyone was giddy over The Full Monty.”
“Always the historian,” Friday said.
“Nineteen ninety-seven isn’t history,” Lee said. “It’s my life. Eighteen eighty-six. All London was talking about a giant, eight foot tall, from China, Chang Woo Gow—”
“Harry’s no freak,” Friday said.
“Neither was this guy,” Lee said. “Married a woman from Liverpool, had two kids, apparently, opened a tea room in Bournemouth. Just tall. That was enough. After the novelty wears off, everyone settles down. People accept Harry for what he is.”
“And what is he?” Friday said. “A madman? An eccentric? A pain in the ass?”
“A charmer,” Lee said. “Who gets into trouble. You know that.”